This invention relates to handling items such as stacks or clips of facial tissues and more particularly to configuring such clips for cartoning such as for placement into particular cartons.
In the past, such tissues are produced in select count stacks or "clips" comprising one flat tissue lying atop another in an elongated flat shaped stack being generally longer than it is wide. This configuration is okay for flat shaped carton packaging; the clip is simply pushed endwise from a cartoner bucket into the box. Typically, the box has at least one major panel generally parallel with the tissues and an opening in the panel provides access for tissue removal for use. On the other hand, upright, cubic or boutique cartons are more confining. The clip must be bent into a U-shape and thusly configured, pushed sideways into the boutique carton which appears more like a cube than the rectangular shape of the flat carton. In these boutique cartons, a major panel adjacent the bend in the confined clip is provided with an opening for accessing the tissues for withdrawal and use.
In the past, when changing a product line or output from a flat carton to a boutique carton, there were two options. A first option was for the manufacturer to simply purchase two cartoning machines. One would handle a flat pack or cartoning process and another would handle a boutique or upright cartoning process. Of course, this involved the cost of an extra machine.
Alternately, if a single machine was used to produce filled flat cartons and boutique cartons, the machine would be stopped and many changeover parts added to reconfigure the machine to render it operable for properly configuring the clip for the new carton. This resulted in production downtime and significant expense for changeover parts.
More particularly, it will be appreciated that when filling flat cartons, flat clips are simply pushed longwise into the carton through an open end of the carton. End flaps are then closed to produce a finished carton or tissue box. When boutique or upright cartons are used, however, the clips are bent into a U-shape which is then pushed sideways into an open-sided boutique carton, which is then closed to produce a finished boutique carton or tissue box.
Generally, the clips in either case are received in individual buckets of a bucket conveyor, and, in appropriate configuration, are loaded into cartons moving along a machine direction, in phased relation to the buckets. A transfer guide bucket conveyor is typically interposed between the first mentioned buckets and the cartons for receiving and guiding the configured clip as it is pushed transversely from the bucket into the carton.
It will be appreciated from this description that the respective clips must be oriented in the buckets for transfer into the cartons in two different directions. For elongated flat clips, their elongated dimension should lie transversely across the buckets, perpendicular to the machine direction of the bucket conveyor, for endwise motion transversely across the bucket, toward and into the flat cartons. For boutique configured, U-shape clips, which are moved sideways transversely off the buckets into the boutique cartons, their elongated dimension should lie parallel to the machine direction of the bucket conveyor as they are moved into the cartoner. Thus, the clips for flat cartons are oriented longitudinally at 90 degrees to the longitudinal position of the clips configured for boutique cartons.
Accordingly, any machine which is changed over to handle both type clips or cartons must be provided with a variety of parts to produce proper clip orientation and handling, essentially for conveying boutique configured clips with their elongated dimension parallel to the machine direction or flat configured clips at 90 degrees or perpendicular to the machine direction.
Accordingly, it has been one objective of the invention to provide a single, improved tissue handling apparatus and methods for tissue clips of varied configuration.
It has been a further objective of the invention to produce an improved handling apparatus and methods for tissue cartoning which handles both flat and boutique configured clips, but without extensive downtime and with a minimum number of change parts.
It has been a further objective of the invention to provide improved apparatus and methods for turning tissue clips for proper orientation for insertion into flat cartons and for selectively transporting tissue clips for loading into boutique cartons.
It has been a further objective of the invention to provide improved methods and apparatus for handling differently configured tissue clips on the same handling apparatus with only minimal changeover parts.